Amazon unveils iPad-friendly Kindle Cloud Reader

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Way back in 2010, Amazon began teasing looks at a new web-based Kindle app. At first, the Kindle for the Web beta only allowed single-chapter glimpses of Amazon titles, but the company assured us that it would soon deliver a full-featured experience in any browser — and that the web app would allow any website to become a Kindle-friendly bookstore, too.

Fast forward to today, and the Amazon Cloud Reader has finally been unveiled. Following in the musical footsteps of Amazon’s Cloud Player, the Reader allows browser-based perusing of all your Kindle purchases. Right now, however, only a pair of browsers are officially supported: Google Chrome and Safari. If you visit read.amazon.com with any other browser, you’ll be advised to download one of the others in order to use the service.

Curiously, the Cloud Reader doesn’t work on Android devices at the moment. That could be a coincidence, or it could be an intentional move by Amazon. With its own Android tablets due to arrive in the very near future, Amazon could simply have decided that it didn’t want to invite third-party tablets to the dance. Android users can, of course, utilize the Kindle app on their devices anyway, so it’s not a serious handicap.

And speaking of tablets, the Kindle Cloud Player also offers a slick experience on the iPad, which might have a little to do with Apple’s required 30% for in-app purchases. One of Amazon’s chief e-Book competitors, Kobo, decided to take this approach as well, outing an HTML5 web app that will arrive some time later this year. By offering their own full-featured web apps outside the app store, both companies will be able to deliver existing content and new purchases to users without having to pay the Apple tax.